


you only need the light when it's burning low

by selenagomez



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Epilepsy, F/F, F/M, Feelings, Kissing, Light Dom/sub, non consensual giving of the bite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 12:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selenagomez/pseuds/selenagomez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura Hale never meant to turn anyone, then she'd come back to Beacon Hills to investigate the spiral and found someone in the middle of a seizure. It wasn't in her nature to ignore someone in need.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you only need the light when it's burning low

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from by Let her go by Passenger. Written for the teen wolf rarepair exchange. Prompt as follows  
> Character A never meant to turn anyone, then she'd come back to Beacon Hills to investigate the spiral and found someone in the middle of a seizure. It wasn't in her nature to ignore someone in need. (Femslash only, please.)

She could never stand to see someone suffering; perhaps it had been the fire that had instilled her innate fear of allowing someone to be in pain while she could do something about it. Or perhaps it was an alphas desire to care for her pack. But there is something about watching the blonde writhe and that look of helplessness that has Laura kneeling beside her. She doesn’t know much about epilepsy; only what she had been told in school and stuff in medical dramas on TV. At this moment in time she’s not even sure that what the girl is experiencing is epilepsy, but she knows she cannot leave her this way.

Laura didn’t know what else to do, the only solution she could come up with to the girls plight was the bite. She might be grown up but she still misses the steady voice of her mother guiding her, she knows that she is the alpha now and it is her duty to start making her own choices. She had just always assumed that she would have more time, more time to learn from her mother and more time to spend with her. However she knows that making the best of things is all she can do, and despite the girls convulsions and the nagging feeling that it is wrong to turn her without her consent she bites into the skin of the blondes neck.

It’s eerie for Laura kneeling in middle of the forest as the girl finally stops twitching, it’s so quiet and for a horrible moment Laura is scared the girl might be dead. She shakily reaches down and brushes strands of blonde curls away from the spot where she had pierced the others skin, pressing two fingers along the skin the alpha begins to search for a pulse. Her fears however it seems are unneeded, just as she really begins to panic and her movements become a little more frantic the girls eyes flash open and Laura is greeted with the familiar and almost comforting sight of yellow eyes. Red eyes meet yellow, alpha meets beta and the power boundaries are set almost immediately. Right?

Wrong. It turns out when Erica Reyes has experienced the healing powers of the bite she is anything but easy to control, she is not the delicate young woman that Laura had expected from that day in the forest. But that simply proves to Laura that she assumes too much, she’s carrying the weight of the guilt that perhaps Erica didn’t want to be changed. That biting feeling that the lack of consent has left her with, despite Erica seeming delighted with her newfound abilities she cannot help but worry that this is all a front. That the reason Erica seems to ignore everything that Laura tells her is because she hates her alpha for what she’s done to her.

The first thing Erica says after turning is “Fuck.” Before Laura hurriedly starts explaining what it is that she has done to her, Erica asks questions about how it will affect her epilepsy. It’s only after Laura tells her that she no longer has epilepsy that the blonde seems sold on the idea. When Laura first found Erica in the woods she was wearing a baggy grey sweatshirt and matching grey jogging bottoms, she had assumed the girl had been working out before her attack. But after Erica turns up on her doorstep with a box of similar clothes she realises that once again she assumes too much.

“ I want to burn these.” Her beta says plainly holding up the box, Laura also notices that not only has Ericas skin cleared up but now she seems to be wearing an array of makeup. Her wolf isn’t sure about the new perfume Ericas taken to wearing, disliking the inorganic smell that it gives off. Not pack, it hisses. Mark her, make her smell like pack, like us.

“Why?” The alpha asks raising an eyebrow; she licks her lips as she scans Ericas new wardrobe choice. Tight jeans that outline every curve of her body and an electric blue corset that makes Laura want to gulp. She decides she hates those jeans for making her feel like she might lose control, after all having a beta should have finally made Laura feel like she had control over something.

“Because, the new Erica Reyes doesn’t wear clothes that make her invisible.” The other replies, shifting the box in her arms and Laura is honestly surprised that her eyes didn’t flash with the tone that she is using. It makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and it makes her want to bend Erica over and warn her about using a tone like that where an alpha is concerned. But that same nagging guilt has Laura biting her tongue and allowing Erica to barge past her into her apartment. She hasn’t been able to bring herself to return to the ruins of the old house yet, and her investigations of the spiral seem to be leading nowhere so she’s bought herself a small apartment on the edge of town so as not to draw attention to herself. Well that had been her intention, however turning Erica Reyes seems to have drawn a lot of attention to her return. People seem to think that she must have had something to do with Erica’s very sudden transformation, and just because their right doesn’t mean that they can stare at her in the grocery store.

“Maybe we should burn the box and give the clothes to charity.. It seems a bit of a waste to burn them.” Laura says, and realises how much like her mother she sounds when she does. “How are you anyway?” It’s a little awkward, but she doesn’t know anyway that it wouldn’t be. Considering she knows almost nothing about Erica despite having turned her into a werewolf upon seeing her, she doesn’t really know what to say to her.

“Well I guess, though it will pretty much ruin the drama of the whole thing.” Erica sighs brushing a blonde curl away from her face and almost pouting at the alpha. “But I suppose as long as I get to set something on fire then I’m pretty much satisfied. I’m good, how goes the search for the spiral or whatever?” Laura can tell that Erica isn’t in the slightest bit interested in her search for the origin of the spiral but then again why would she be? They have no real connection, no real bond.

“ So schools good.. You urm.. Making friends?” It seems that her cluelessness on what to say to a teenage beta has reached an all-time new level of awful. “So we’ll burn this box outside then and later I’ll take these clothes down to store for some other person to urm. Enjoy.” The more she feels like she has no control over the situation in hand, the more Laura hates the dynamic between them.

Erica cocks her head to the side and gives Laura what looks like a once over. “So aren’t alphas supposed to be the leader of the pack or something.. Like, in the wild?” Erica asks, a frown creasing her face as she runs her tongue across a set of lip gloss covered lips. Inside Lauras wolf is screaming yes, red eyes alight inside of her head as the wolf stalks toward Erica. Hers. Her beta. Erica must submit. But Laura gulps and presses her claws into her palms, feeling the pain and allowing herself to focus on being human. Erica isn’t hers; she has shown no real interest in Laura as anything other than having a place to crash and a source of information about werewolves.

Carefully Laura attempts to calculate an answer, one that will attempt to satisfy both her wolf and her guilt. “ Yes, alphas are the leader of their pack. They are generally the most powerful wolf, and the oldest. My mother was my alpha before she.. Before she passed away. She was an extremely powerful wolf and she had a lot of experience, my family and I used her as a source of knowledge and authority for our pack.” Laura explained, trying to get through talking about her family without breaking the calm and controlled persona that she was trying to portray to the younger wolf.

For a few moments Erica seems to be mulling over what she’s told her, and then she looks up with confusion in her eyes. “But your pack was a lot bigger than just two people right? Like it isn’t normal for a pack to be just the two of us?” She says, and Laura can’t help but empathise with what seems to be a need for pack, for family. Wolves aren’t generally solitary creatures, they need pack and Laura realises that no matter how hard she attempts to deny it she turned Erica in part because she was lonely. She hasn’t seen Derek in months and the almost nightly calls are not enough when she’s lived so close beside him for so long, her wolf howls for him just as it howls for Erica now.

“ Yeah.. My pack was a lot bigger than this... But that doesn’t matter now. Let’s get on with burning this box so I can get back to looking for the origin of the spiral.” Laura replies, raising her chin. Dominant in the face of having to explain what happened to the rest of her pack. She knows Erica will ask her one day, but she isn’t ready for that question just yet. She wants to hold off on having to answer for as long as she can, she doesn’t want the beta to feel sorry for her. Why should she when she made the younger girl a monster without even asking her permission.

It takes months of meetings like this for the two wolves to really start to warm up to one another, she gets Erica through moon after moon and teacher her to find an anchor. She doesn’t ask the beta to tell her what the anchor is, because she doesn’t feel that she can ask that despite the closeness she is starting to feel to the young wolf. Though she doesn’t tell her beta she is pleased to see that the blonde has made friends now, with a quiet boy named Vernon Boyd and the well meaning but slightly dopey Scott Mcall. The two of them seem to end up spending more time at Lauras flat than she would have liked, she never thought she would pay host to a bunch of teenagers who’s main interests seem to be lying around eating the majority of her food and watching trash on television. While Laura complains, she doesn’t really mind at all. It’s nice to have them all there, filling some of the space in her heart that’s been so empty since the fire.

On Ericas seventeenth birthday they have a party, by this time the guilt that had been nagging at the back of Lauras mind for so long is finally starting to fade. As she watches Scott and a reluctant Boyd putting on a party hats; and Ericas delighted face at the shout of. “Surprise!” The alpha strokes a hand through her betas hair, something that she’d on instinct but now she did it so often it felt like a habit. Little touches to Erica, a hand on her shoulder, brushing her hair off her face. She didn’t know if she was imagining it but her touches seemed to relax the beta, when Laura was touching her it was like all the tension seemed to escape from the beta. When the candles on the cake are blown out and Boyd and Scott have already started on the drive home Laura finally clears her throat and thrusts a small wrapped gift into Ericas hands. It’s childish and a little sentimental but she wanted Erica to have something that felt ‘pack’ and something that made Laura feel like she was carrying something that might make Erica think of her. The beta passes the package from hand to hand for a moment and Lauras heart flutters just a little, something that she had not expected to feel again in a long time.

When Erica tears into the gift Laura holds her breath just a little, she wants her to like it. She watches her betas face with the upmost interest as she holds up the small necklace with the Hale pack symbol dangling from it. She had Derek make it and refused to tell him who it was for when she did, she always did like to tease her little brother and she’s pretty sure he cracked a smile when she called him nosey even though she couldn’t actually see his expression. That thought alone allows her to relax a little more as she watches Erica examine the gift, what she isn’t expecting is for the other girl to lean over and kiss her.

The kiss is softer than she would have expected their first kiss to be, and Ericas lips taste like birthday cake. But the wolf inside her seems more than satisfied to purr away in the back of her mind, Lauara is taller than Erica and her body is more athletic but as she moves closer to her they seemed to fit nicely. A hand reaches down to cup the others face, Erica nibbles on her lip and Laura laughs just a little. Pulling the other girl closer. “Mine.” She mumbles because the wolf inside her demands it, demands that Erica be claimed for good now. Erica laughs and nods. “Yours. Now less talking more kissing.” After all those months of tension, Erica has broken it with one kiss. It almost makes Lauara feel a little sheepish

It’s also Erica who sniffs out the girl who turns out to be their pack emissary; Lydia Martin is something that Laura never expected to come into contact with. The redheaded banshee is a force of nature; she holds life and death in the palm of her perfectly manicured hand. She holds a kind of confidence and control that is rare in someone of her age and she seems to even have Erica taken aback. She introduces herself to Laura and meets her eyes, even Erica had not the confidence to stare an alpha wolf in the eyes at first sight. But unlike with Erica, Lauras wolf does not seem to mind Lydias lack of submission because it instead recognises Lydias respect for the alpha.

“Wonderful to meet you I’m Lydia Martin and Erica tells me that she thinks I might be your emissary.” The redhead smiles, red lips stretching out in a smile. She holds her hand out as if she is meeting a potential client rather than her alpha, but Laura guesses this impersonal manner is what keeps the redhead feeling in control. It’s amazing that a girl on her own could have mastered powers like the ones that Lydia is experiencing all on her own, but it must be this control that has allowed her to do so. That or as Erica suspects they are not the first wolves that Lydia has come into contact with, there is something about the redhead that reminds Laura of someone that she used to know. Something about her humour, and the way she stands. She doesn’t miss the small P that hangs from the silver necklace around the girls neck, reminds of the necklace she gave Erica.

“It’s good to meet you Lydia, I’m Laura and from what Erica tells me of your powers it sounds like she could be right.” Laura replies wrapping an arm around Ericas waist and pulling the beta closer, she can feel the blondes smile without seeing it and she knows that her girlfriend is content. For the first time in a long while Laura is starting to feel like Beacon Hills is home again, she’s starting to feel that it’s time to invite Derek back and be a pack again. Soon she will, fire burns and it leaves a devastated land but the earth has a way of healing and that is what Laura is finally learning to do.


End file.
